This incident sparked a rant from Wheaton about the web giant forcing users to log in to its network in order to simply vote on a video. But the outrage wasn’t driven by the actor and author’s desire not to use Google+ — in fact, he is a regular user, and an extremely popular one, with more than 1.3 million people including him in their Circles (the Google+ version of Twitter or Facebook lists). Instead, Wheaton said he was concerned that users who wanted to give his videos a “thumbs up” might refrain if they had to join yet another social network in order to do so. As he put it:

Oh, go f*** yourself, Google. This is just as bad as companies forcing me to “like” something on Facebook before I can view whatever it is they want me to “like.” Just let me thumbs up something, without forcing me to “upgrade” to G+, you ****heads.

Making it so that only Google Plus users can decide whether a YouTube video is worth watching benefits no one except for Google Plus: It is bad for viewers, bad for video creators, and bad for YouTube’s ability to curate and tailor videos to potential viewers.

The addition of Google+ voting buttons to YouTube videos no doubt seems like a natural extension of the network — one directly in line with the philosophy that Horowitz outlined last year, where Google+ becomes a “social layer” on top of everything the company does. And using YouTube as a way to promote the network as a destination and encourage users to sign up probably seems like a natural thing to do as well. But the response from Wheaton and Gaiman and others shows that some users are going to see it as an attempt to shove Google+ down their throats whether they want it or not.

Buttons on a YouTube video may seem like a relatively small thing to get so upset about, but it’s just one more lever that Google is using to try and push users into its network whether they want to go or not. Is that really the best way to get the kind of goodwill that a successful social network requires?